Linaro names George Grey as CEO

Linaro, at its inaugural developer conference, announced that its board of directors has named George Grey as the company’s chief executive officer. Grey’s 27-year career has included a number of software and hardware high-tech companies in Europe and the U.S. Prior to this role, he was founder and CEO of Mobicious, a mobile content start-up, and president and COO of SavaJe, a Java-based smart phone operating system.

Linaro was created to be an independent company to address the challenges associated with accelerating open source software (OSS) on systems on chip. (SoC). It was launched by its founding companies – ARM, IBM, Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments – at Computex in June, with an interim executive leadership team provided by ARM. Acting Executive Director Tom Lantzsch will resign from his role immediately and become an advisor to the company, while Ben Cade will remain as an executive director, sharing the office with Grey, until year end.

Linaro is meeting all of its operational goals since formation. In less than five months, Linaro has grown quickly from 10 engineers to 70, and is on track toward its goal of 100 employees by year end. The first product release will occur on time, and it will be announced on Nov. 10 at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara, Calif., supported by presentations, partner demonstrations and a webinar. Currently Linaro is hosting its first weeklong Developer Summit in Orlando, Fla.

“We are ecstatic to have been able to recruit someone of George’s talent,” said Tom Lantzsch, departing executive director of Linaro. “He has a wealth of experience managing software companies that will be critical for Linaro’s next phase of success. I am returning to ARM knowing Linaro is in competent hands.”

“The board were unanimous in their selection of George, based on his track record of leading and growing technology companies, his hands-on approach to leadership and personal qualities that align with the organization’s ethos,” said Ben Cade, executive director, Linaro. “I am looking forward to working beside George during this transition period to ensure the fantastic progress we have made continues.”

“Linaro is already contributing to improving tools, aligning SoC support, consolidating the ARM ecosystem around a common base and working directly in upstream projects,” said Grey. “I look forward to working with Linaro’s members, management, engineering team, and partners to accelerate this further and to deliver on our mission.”

Linaro will be presenting on the accomplishments of the first engineering cycle and plans for the second at the following conferences: Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE), Cambridge UK; LPC, Cambridge, Mass.; ARM Techcon, Santa Clara, Calif.; and the ARM Asia Technical conferences.